The present disclosure relates to an illuminating unit applying light including laser light, and a display performing image display using such an illuminating unit.
An optical module as one of major component parts of a projector (projection display) is generally configured of an illumination optical system (illuminating unit) including a light source, and a projection optical system including a light modulation device. In the field of such projectors, a small (palm-sized) and lightweight, portable projector called microprojector is beginning to be widespread. In the microprojector, a light emitting diode (LED) has been mainly used as the light source for the illuminating unit.
On the other hand, laser is now the subject of interest as a new light source for the illuminating unit. For example, a green semiconductor laser is being developed following the commercialization of high-output blue and red semiconductor lasers, and is reaching a practical application level. Due to such a background, there has been proposed a projector including monochrome lasers (semiconductor lasers) of three primary colors of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) as light sources for the illuminating unit. A projector having a wide color reproduction range and exhibiting small power consumption is achieved through use of the monochrome lasers as the light sources.
In addition, such a projector generally has a predetermined uniformizing optical system (uniformizing optical member) in an illuminating unit to uniformize the light quantity distribution (intensity distribution) of illumination light emitted from the illuminating unit. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication Nos. 2002-311382 and 2012-8549 each disclose two (a pair of) fly-eye lenses as the uniformizing optical member.